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Primary Documents - James W. Gerard on German Policy of Deportations from Lille, April 1916

Reproduced below is the
text of a statement written by the U.S. Ambassador to Germany,
James W. Gerard,
in April 1916. In his statement Gerard addresses reports of a new
German policy of deporting able men and women from German-occupied Lille in
France to other districts to provide a form of enforced labour.

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This allegation followed
earlier similar reports from Belgium. It was not just Ambassador
Gerard who believed this to be a systematic German policy; a similar view
was expressed by the Spanish Ambassador to Germany.

U.S. Ambassador to
Germany James Gerard Watson on Deportations in Lille

It seems that the Germans
had endeavoured to get volunteers from the great industrial towns of Lille,
Roubaix, and Tourcoing to work these fields; that after the posting of the
notices calling for volunteers only fourteen had appeared.

The Germans then gave
orders to seize a certain number of inhabitants and send them out to farms
in the outlying districts to engage in agricultural work. The
Americans told me that this order was carried out with the greatest
barbarity; that a man would come home at night and find that his wife or
children had disappeared and no one could tell hint where they had gone
except that the neighbours would relate that German non-commissioned
officers and a file of soldiers had carried them off.

For instance, in a house of
a well-to-do merchant who had perhaps two daughters of fifteen and seventeen
and a man servant, the two daughters and the servant would be seized and
sent off together to work for the Germans in some little farmhouse whose
location was not disclosed to the parents. The Americans told me that
this sort of thing was causing such indignation among the population of
these towns that they feared a great uprising and a consequent slaughter and
burning by the Germans.

That night at dinner I
spoke to the Chancellor about this and told him that it seemed to me
absolutely outrageous; and that, without consulting with my Government, I
was prepared to protest in the name of humanity against a continuance of
this treatment of the civil population of occupied France.

The Chancellor told me that
he had not known of it, that it was the result of orders given by the
military, that he would speak to the Emperor about it, and that he hoped to
be able to stop further deportations. I believe that they were
stopped, but twenty thousand or more who had been taken from their homes
were not returned until months afterwards.

I said in a speech that I
made in May on my return to America that it required the joint efforts of
the Pope, the King of Spain, and our President to cause the return of these
people to their homes; and I then saw that some German press agency had come
out with an article that I had made false statements about this matter
because these people were not returned to their homes as a result of the
representations of the Pope, the King of Spain, and our President, but were
sent back because the Germans had no further use for them.

It seems to me that this
denial makes the case rather worse than before.